one of the best charactertics of a judge, it's somebody who when you have a disagreement, actually goes back and thinks it true. doesn't just just grudgingly in put as couple of words, okay, i addressed your concern but goes back and actually says how does that idea change the way i was approaching this opinion? . .

and also with that we have -- [laughter] -- we have a commentary on the constitution of the united states, two volumes. >> this is gorgeous. >> and also what we call the familiar exposition of the constitution of the united states by the joseph story, and with all modesty i must say it has a foreword by me. [laughter] [applause] >> now if you'll join us all, and we have in the foyer we will have a reception where you can personally meet the judge, but

before we leave i just want to thank you again personally for being with us for all you've done for the law, and particularly for being with us tonight. thank you very much. >> thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> we take you live now to the national press club for remarks from veterans affairs secretary robert mcdonald. you will be speaking today but efforts to improve medical care and other services for veterans. secretary mcdonald has been on the job for just over 100 days. it took over the department after former secretary eric shinseki retired amid a scandal involving va medical care officials. now to the press club where introductory marks are just getting underway. this is live coverage on c-span2. >> virgil dickson, reporter with

modern health care. [applause] >> 2014 unfolded, u.s. department of veterans affairs came to look like an agency very much in need of management. reports surfaced of delayed care at va hospitals, and a cover-up of records, as well as long waits for the processing of benefit claims. those troubles led to the resignation of the previous veterans secretary, eric shinseki, and the appointment of a successor with strong management credentials. he is our guest today, former procter & gamble chairman and ceo robert mcdonald. [applause] >> mcdonald has said he is a 90 day plan for rebuilding the trust of veterans for the american public. and he wants a new vision in

place by veterans day, four days of no. we hope to hear a preview of that plan today. mcdonald has some new tools to work with in trying to improve the agency he leads. in august president obama sign at the reform bill into law that provides $10 billion to pay that doctors to treat some veterans who can't get prompt appointment at the hospitals and clinics. and $5 billion to hire more doctors and other medical professionals. the new va secretary enters public service with a strong private sector resume. in 1975 graduate of west point committee served in the army for five years and then went to work at procter & gamble. mcdonald's start out as a brand manager for hide comment what documentaries international divisions before taking the helm of p&d. under his leadership, the company increased its customer base by 1 billion, and increased

its stock price by 50%. bva is even bigger than p&g. [laughter] answers more than 9 million veterans and their families each day, the staff of 312,000, and a budget of $164 billion. the va provides health care, disability compensation and rehabilitation, education assistance, home loans, burial in the national cemetery, and other benefits and services. here to tell us about his plans for the va is secretary robert mcdonald. mcdonald. please join me in giving him a warm national press club well,. [applause] -- well. >> thank you so much, and thanks to myron for having me, and also

many thanks to kevin for initially invited me when we were together in cincinnati, ohio, at a uso we even. and thanks also to the staff i think was the first or second day of my nomination process where shatt contacted me via e-mail and sent i have to come to the press club. so i appreciate the warm welcome that attack and it's great to see so many familiar faces in the audience. it is a true that the va is larger than procter & gamble in many ways. we have about 340,000 employees. our budget is over $155 billion, but in many ways procter & gamble is also bigger in a very important why. proctor and gamble on any given day, 5 billion people on the planet use at least one proctor and gamble product. that's five out of seven, and as

myron so nicely pointed out, during my tenure at sco we increase by a billion and many of those people were in developing markets, people we hadn't reached the but we are not going to rest until he gets everybody on the planet. because our products improve people's lives. the reason i tell you this because i think this is a good reason for why president obama decided to nominate me and why the senate confirmed any so quickly, is the expectation is s that the va, we have lots of customers. my rent talked about that. we have 9 million veterans that are health care system but for a 22 million veterans in the united states. what we need to be abou at the r service. and that is at the center of everything we are doing in the

road to veterans day and beyond. so i'm going to talk about what we are doing it but i think it's really wonderful to be here on this day that as i'm assuming your last meeting before veterans day, it's wonderful to be your pick in fact we were talking, kevin and i were talking that maybe we should do this every year, and every your i could come back and give you a state of the va discussion over lunch. [applause] i know my friends from the va up your probably cringing i just made a commitment. [laughter] i thought the lunch was pretty good, bob. what did you think? anyway, every year on the 11th day of the 11th month, all of americans reflect on life, and we pay tribute to the men and women who made our way of life

possible. this is always a solemn day. we celebrate the service, the sacrifice, the enduring achievements of almost 22 million living americans have served our nation in uniform, both at home and abroad, during times of war and during times of peace. individually and collectively, veterans are the lifeblood of democracy. as president obama recently reminded us, when the world is threatened, it calls on america, and we call on our troops. in the coming days, countless ceremonies will be held across the country. americans will pause to honor those earn the title of veterans. men and women who gave themselves, no matter what day, but on that day we will pay tribute that single day we will pay tribute to them and honor

them, and no words of appreciation can fully capture what we all of them. employees of the department -- thank you, i agree with you. employees of the department of veterans affairs are privileged to serve the american veteran. there is no higher calling, and that's why i took this job. because for me every single day is veterans day. every single day is veterans day. and that's why i love this job. since getting to the at the end of july, i embarked on a road to veterans day. my rent talked about it, to get immediate reform -- my rent talked about it to get immediate reform at the va. i've been to 21 different cities. i visited 42 different va operations. i've spoken with the deans and spoken to the students of the 11 medical schools.

in case you're not aware, i am hiring nurses, doctors. any of you with a medical degree, please come see me. and we've been meeting with veterans service organizations. i see bob here, and i'm thrilled to see bob. nongovernment organizations, members of congress, members of state governments, members of county governments, city governments. and i've met with union officials, and what i've told them all is that this is a big task to try to care for our veterans in the right way. we can't do it alone, and one of our key strategies is strategic partnerships. we embrace everything you want to do to help veterans, and come partner with us and we will work together. this 90 day plan which we call the road to veterans day focus first on rebuilding trust. rebuilding trust is our first strategy. we know that trust has been compromise with the va and we

know we have to earn it back one veteran at a time. in that regard i think we have the right nation. that is, to care for the nation's veterans. they are our customers, and everything we do is focus on them. without them we have no reason to exist. i think we have the right values. those values are signified by this acronym, i care, a button you will see many of us in the va care. those values are integrity, commitment, advocacy, respect and excellence. these values define our culture, and they define the behaviors that we would all like to see by every employee in the va. so not surprisingly on my very first day as secretary, i asked for every leader in the va and every employee in the va to recommit themselves to our

mission and to our values. this was not a trite exercise. my expectation was that every leader in the would get together with their organization, would sit down, talk about our mission come what that mission means, what the implications are for their area of our business, and then talk about our values and where those values may been compromise in our organization. i made it clear, very clear that anyone in our organization who violated those values will be held accountable. and i am convinced that we have with this mission with these values, the framework in place to create the change that we need to make. let me talk a little bit more about accountability, because there's been a lot of discussion about accountability in the media. every leader, as i said, has talked about our values with

their teams, and i talk about the meaning and purpose everywhere i go. of those 41 different sites i visited, in every single one i have a town hall meeting with employees. i've been meeting with the leadership of the organization. i have a meeting with the whistleblowers in that organization. i have a meeting with union presidents and i had a meeting with all stakeholders. and in every single case i talk about our mission and our values. we have right now proposed more than 40 disciplinary actions so far, and we have over 100 investigations currently underway within the department. some are led by the ig, some are led by the department of justice, some involve the fbi, some involve the office of special counsel, and others involved obviously and accountability team that we stood up. we call it the office of accountability review. it's a small organization that

reports directly to me. right now we are tracking about 5600 disciplinary actions over the past year. some of those, 5600 are already completed. yesterday i reported that we have about 2000 going on right now, but we are very serious about making sure that we hold people accountable for their actions. when all of these investigations are done, and there's a hierarchy to the hierarchical order, these investigations, when the fbi obviously has the highest position because they're talking about criminal investigations, all of the evidence is passed down to us and we then can use that evidence to take the appropriate action. and we do so in accordance with the law and in accordance with the constitution of the united states. currently, we have been certified by the office of special counsel under the whistleblower protection

certification program. this was very important to me because we had evidence is of whistleblowers being maltreated by their superiors. i wanted to make sure we went through the certification process, ma and every time the office of special counsel has identified retaliation taken against whistleblowers we have taken the steps to put them in a properly new jobs, better jobs so that they continue their careers. and we thank them for their input. why? reminds me of a story i was once with chancellor and gloom or call and we're talking -- angela merkel ever talk about the procter & gamble company in germany and she's complaining about the fact that she had to get reelected every so often. and i said, excuse me, excuse me, madam chancellor, but your election is periodic just like we finished a two-year election cycle for the house, a six-year

election cycle for the senate. well, at the procter & gamble company of 5 million people voting every single day. every day you shave your space -- face with a gillette razor but every day you use tide detergent to your vote on the procter & gamble company. at the va we ar have people votg every day. we have 9 million people voting every day on the quality of our health care. we have 22 million veterans voting every single day on whether to connect with those for benefits, for g.i. bill, for loans, student loans, for mortgages. that's the way we look at it. and in order to do that well we've had to have the criticism from employees, and we've got to have employees involved in our change efforts. bob snyder said at her with me is one of the reasons i brought him here was to recognize the great work he is doing. he's helping me lead the change

effort, and one of the things that bob and i have talked a lot about is that we need to set up teams of employees all over the country that can participate in our change efforts. who better to change the way we do our work in the people who actually do the work? i mean, this isn't brain surgery or rocket science. this is the way great companies change themselves. bob has been around for 22 i think it is different sites. he's held meetings, and we have now deployed individuals on these are teams that are going to be helping us lead the changeover. i want every single employee to help us understand how to improve our service to veterans, that doesn't just been protecting whistleblowers but it also means changing the culture and that's what we're in the process of doing. our road to veterans they

initially focus on accelerating the access to care. that's our second strategy in addition to rebuilding trust. we need to deliver better care. i have to thank my west point classmate and my dear friend of over 40 years, sloan gibson, who served as interim secretary added that deputy secretary for the way he helped pave the way before i was confronted under his leadership we begin to surge resources, the sites were we need more doctors, more nurses. i heard and the facilities across the country how we have been providing longer -- bless you -- longer clinical ours. we have been moving mobile vans to different locations. we've been asking our employees to work overtime, and we've been trying to do everything we can. we been using telehealth and a better way. this is wages broadband to get your work done, particularly for veterans who may be a real areas. we've been reaching out to

veterans who are on a wait list and we've asked them, you know, when would you like your appointment, and we're getting them a pointless in the clinic. wait times are decreasing. va has scheduled more than 1.2 million more appointments in the past four months than in the same period last year. 1.2 million. in total, the eight medical center scheduled over 19 million veteran appointments from june to october. there's no medical system and country that can do that. we are authorizing 1.19 million va health care appointments. that's a 47% increase over the same period last year. we've reduced the national new patient primary care wait time by 18%, meaning if you're a veteran and you want to see a primary care physician, the wait time is down 18% but in many of

our geography is now, because we've hired the physicians we need, the wait time is basically walked in, or less than 30 days. we would like it to be less than 30 days everywhere. right now we've completed 90% of appointments within 30 days of the day that the veteran preferred to have the appointment. notably, in phoenix which was the first medical center that have a problem and was the first place i visited, we now have patient care primary we times down 37% since june. in my discussions with employees, with veterans and stakeholders, i've seen the long-term care, long-term reform is necessary in the va. that's our third strategy. so i first strategy is rebuild trust. second stretches rebuild care and service. third strategy is plain and reform for the long-term. we think about this strategy in

the context of a reform effort we have undertaken called my va. the reason we call it my va is what i would like all of the veterans to think of when they think of va. ava is not as monolithic black box, hard to understand, hard to reach. it's human beings. it's all of us sitting here on the dais. it's people wanting to take care of our veterans. we want every battered to think of us as a warm hug. we want veterans who want to come, be with us and to think of this va as their own va. my va will provide veterans with seamless integrated and responsive va, whether they come to us digitally, by phone or in person. one of the things we know about customers, customers want to come to a certain way. and as a business you've got to be willing to help them get to you at the time to want to and for the service that they want.

as many of you know, i gave out my cell phone number publicly at my first national press conference. [laughter] it has been republished twice by the "washington post," and i had the great joy last night of having some of the people published it fro for my breakfai had with him yesterday morning. it didn't take long for veterans to realize what my number was, or what my e-mail address was. but, you know, what? i did this on purpose. i did it on purpose or one single reason. i was trying to communicate to veterans how we care for them. i care for them so much i want them calling me. i want them texting me. i will try to solve the problems. so far i've had about 850, 900 calls or texts to so far we've been able to work through about 30 of them. [laughter] let me restate that. 30 to a positive conclusion.

not 30, that's all we have dealt with. we deal with them within weeks that when we get them. but the 30 that it had the positive conclusion, i can't tell you how rewarding it is to get the callback, which often comes saying, you know, i've been struggling with this for most, thank you for helping me. or a homeless person saying, i now qualify for disability benefits. i got my first check. i am no longer homeless. this is what makes all of our jobs at the va tremendously rewarding. we are reviewing all of our operations to figure how to reorganize the department for success. and, obviously, the implications of the new act, the veterans access choice and accountability act is underway and is an important part of our service to our veterans. yesterday we began sending out cards to veterans who are most in need. those beyond the 40-mile limit in the legislation from our

facilities. the veterans health administration is working to make va health care more veterans centric under something we call a blueprint for excellence. the blueprint for excellence is a strategic plan for health care system going forward. we asked jonathan perlin, doctor jonathan perlin was the chief medical officer at hca, one of the largest health care networks in the country, and a former undersecretary of health who worked with her in drum undersecretary for health, carolyn clancy, doctor carolyn clancy, to put together this list of strategies that we're not going to employ people again in order to change our health care system. and return it in large measure we are best in class in many areas but returned to preeminent class in every area. as you also know we need doctors and nurses and that's why i went on a recruiting binge. i've been trying to set the example.

i've been to 11 medical schools. i started at the duke medical school. you may not know this but we have relationships to in the va and most of the great medical schools in the country where the doctors who teach in a medical school do their clinical work at the va and do the research at the va. and that three-legged stool is what makes the va so essential for american medicine. i spoke at the institute of medicine not to long ago here in washington, d.c., at the annual convention but i received a standing ovation. it wasn't about me. what it was about was the role, the important role that the va place in our country in american medicine. it's a place where we do research that nobody else will pay for. because our veterans need a. it's a place where we do clinical work with our veterans every single day. i would argue the very best patients in the world. and it's a place where doctors can take that clinical work and that research and go into the very best medical schools in the

country, duke, harvard, penn, stanford, and teach. so we are very proud to have these associations because what it means for our veterans, the 9 million veterans who use our health care system, is they get the very best doctors in the country. i'm a big fan of stephen covey. stephen covey wrote a book called habits of highly effective people. and one of those habits is if you want to learn something, teach. so i love it when our va doctors teach in the best medical schools in the country because that tells me they're providing the best clinical care to our veterans every single day that they work in our clinics. so we're going to continue to do that. one of the things we had to do to improve retention of our doctors is to take a look at the salary scales. our salary scales hadn't moved for a number of years. so before i went out recruiting, i raised the salary for our doctors. it was done by location, by specialty. so doctors that perform have more headroom in the salary.

it's helping us recruit new doctor. we are taking a look at nurses right now for the same reason. as you think of our veterans benefits administration, we have reduced the claims backlog by 60%, which is surely significant progress. i think it's frankly one of the most profound transformations of government business that i seem in my career. how do we do? a lot of it isn't due to using i.t. as leverage. we created a system called the vbms, veteran benefits management system. now the majority of claims are done in digital format rather than paper. and as a result of that the claims can be handled much more expeditiously. and as a result we been able to drive that down by 60%. in case of, everybody knows about our health care system. generally you know about our

benefits administration. another administration that really doesn't get much credit but really deserves a lot of credit is our national cemetery administration. it actually was the genesis of the forerunner of the va. it was abraham lincoln is it was abraham lincoln who said in his second inaugural address that we have to care for he who has borne the battle for his widow and his orphan. we don't say that any longer. we paraphrase it because 11% of our veterans are women come in 20% of dod today is women's we know that essential increase. so we say for those who have borne the battle. but during the civil war, soldiers died on the battlefield and were buried on the battlefield. there were no dogtags. when i was in the 82nd airborne division i would wear a dog tag around my neck. i would put one in my boot in case my body got separated to there were no dogtags in the civil war and no way to identify people. there was no military procedure of writing home about the death of a loved one. so it was president lincoln who

initially worked with congress to pass the law to put aside federal land to bury civil war soldiers. it was the early sanitation commission, the forerunner of the va and actually dug up the soldier to we dug up and identified about 67%, two-thirds come of the soldiers who fought in the civil war who were unidentified. those with people who begin populating our national cemeteries today. so if you want to do a course in civil war history, come see me. we've got great cemeteries. we've got great people knowledge of her history can teach you about what we learned. i didn't want to leave out another one of our strategic objectives, which is to decrease homelessness. president obama and mrs. obama, the first lady, have been very big on the reduction of homelessness. we have an interagency committee made up of hud, housing and urban development, va, and labor

where we work on homelessness. we just had a meeting just a few weeks ago which tom perez chaired. veterans homelessness is down 33%, and secretary shinseki deserves enormous, enormous credit for what's been done with veterans homelessness. but i've got to tell you, if there's one homeless veteran, is want to me. so we are not giving up. we are continuing to work very, very hard to do that. [applause] >> let me close by saying that i am personally convinced that this job can be done, that these reforms can be executed, that we can care for the veterans the way we should be caring for them. and i've seen it. i've seen it in best practices around the country. i sought in palo alto where are palo alto facility in which is populated by doctors who teach at stanford medical school, is

one of our foremost facilities in the use of lean management techniques to great operations. i've seen it in places like the bronx where we have and sponging and bill ballmer who developed something called the re- walk and the exoskeleton to help paralyzed veterans walk. this isn't the circus trick. this is done because if they paralyzed veteran walks, their muscles get exercise. their bones don't have osteoporosis. their gastrointestinal system works for the first time. i've been to other places where i have seen tremendous success. the national cemetery administration recently was rated number one in customer satisfaction, according to the american customer satisfaction index. this is an outside party. they rated it higher. they rated it higher than google,-lexus, higher than some

of your favorite brands. so we know we can do this. i've seen work at our benefits offices where we have driven down the backlog of claims. i know we can do this. what encourages me is the employees, the employees of the va. they are committed to veterans. they are inspired by the high calling that we all have, and what we simply need to do is work together to reform what we do, improve veteran outcomes and make sure we take care of the 20 million veterans in this country. thank you very much for your attention. i look forward to your questions. [applause] >> thank you, secretary. thank you, bob. what if you learned about how the problems at the phoenix va hospital, the delayed care and the falsified records happened?

want to be done to make sure that those problems don't occur elsewhere in the future? >> the big issue here is making sure that when an organization has a metric, but the metric doesn't get confused for an outcome. and when i look at what we need to do in va, i see an increasing need for more doctors, more nurses, and, frankly, more money. let me to you an example. i came in. i did an analysis of when does the affect of an award keep on the va? now, you would think, okay, well, soldiers are coming home from afghanistan and iraq. many of them if not most of them will be home by the end of this year and next. 40 years. 40 years is when the peak demand

occurs for a veteran serving in a war, 40 years from the end of the war. why is that? because people age. i was in the 82nd airborne division. i have parachuted about 60 times. i had a kidney stone. the doctor did what's called a qb the extra. he said i extra. he selected his and badges. it is is a founder katie stam. it's still high in your keeping. we can zap it, break in pieces, you will pass the. the bad news is you have no disks in the lower back, l-1 and l2 are missing. have you ever parachuted? off mike -- [laughter] yes. and as i age it harder and harder for me to sleep the night air guitar for me to stand for long periods of time, but that doesn't occur when you're 25, 30 or 40. it starts occurring when you're 60, 61 like i am. so what we need to do is work with the president and members of congress to help them

understand what we need, what the capability needed is, what the demand is. and make sure we get budgets and programs to fit that capacity. so if you asked me what was the issue in phoenix. the issue was two things. one, demand was way beyond what capacity was, and that's why we have hired a -- when i would defend its we needed 1000 new doctors, nurses, medical professionals. we have hired many of them already. we also need new facilities. good health care systems have three rooms for her primary care physician at phoenix we had one. so you simply can't get the people through the system fast enough. so the new law gives us 27 new facilities. one of those is in phoenix so we can increase the space. the second part of it which i initially started talking about is the culture. you just can't have a culture

where a process metric becomes an outcome a metric. and in phoenix, the 14 the metric became what drove the culture rather than good outcomes for veterans. that's why i started my talk with the nation and the values. you always have got to start there. it's a nation and the values. don't let any other metric getting your way. -- its of the nation. >> the va general inspector support this summer downplayed the links between the care in phoenix and 40 deaths that a whistleblower suit could have resulted from the delays. recently e-mail surfaced showing the acting va secretary sloan gibson, or you pay tribute to do in your remarks, correspond with the acting inspecting general to encourage him to include that language downplaying those links in the report. was it appropriate for gibson to seek changes to an inspector general's report, it was

appropriate for the ig to act on gibson's suggestions? >> we take every veteran outcome and credibly seriously, and the fact that veterans in phoenix weren't getting the appropriate care that they had earned, we all take very personally. very personally. because these other guys we all served with. and when i think back to the guys i served with, it becomes very, very personal. it becomes very personal. and to think that there's some shenanigans going on for political purposes by a man as honorable as sloan gibson who is also serve his country, went to west point, served his country, and has agreed to serve again, ladies and gentlemen. i mean, he was very successful in business and he has come back to serve again.

i just, i can't comment on how that upsets me. the normal process in government, and those of you who are here in washington, i'm sure you know this, is an inspector general always has an arms length relationship with the department they serve. i want that. in fact, one of the first things i did on day one was i went to the ig's office, and i spoke to the assembled group, including inspector general himself, and i said, i want you to be as tough as you can possibly be on our department. because we can't get better without you being tough on us. now, i've run companies. i've been on the boards of companies. i've been on audit committees, and this is what the role is, is that you've got to be tough if you're going to find a way to improve. so as part of the talk i asked our inspector general, please

give me all of the issues you have identified that you believe has not been we mediated yet. and the had to do some work, but they went back through all their historic files. they found all of those and they have provided those to me, and we've now set up groups of people to remediate those issues and i intend to try to re- mediate every single one. but the process followed income is when the ig creates a report is they sent it to the affected department at this is what they normally do. they sent a draft and asked for comment. to ask for comment because the most effective ig, the most effective audit committee any company is an audit committee that works with you to correct problems. it's not a gadget exercise. certainly part of it is gotcha, but they work with you to improve the department. and i'm sure when the ig said

the report over, his expectation was, you know, help me improve the report. help me be clear on the issues. now, during the inspector general's testimony in the house veterans' affairs committee, he said that the report was not affected by anyone. the final report was not affected by anyone outside the ig's office. >> based on what you know do you think any deaths happened in phoenix because of the delayed care? and if so, will we ever know how may people died because of this? >> i think that question didn't hear my answer to the last question, but that's because it was submitted ahead of time. again, any veteran outcome that's adverse in our facilities i take personally. that's all you need to know. >> thank you.

sharon helmand, the former director of phoenix va medical center, has been on paid administrative leave for six month. the va's own ig report demonstrated negligence on her part. when are you going to use the tools given to you by congress and simply fire her? >> the new act gave us basically one new tool. and that one new tool is to shorten the appeal time of the senior executive service government employee. that's one class of employee. that one class of employee is less than 1% of the 340,000 people that we have. so the appeal time was have to and we are grateful for that but we're grateful for that but that's the only change it as i said, there's a hierarchy to investigation, and the administrative disciplinary action that they take is in a

sense lower in the hierarchy than criminal prosecution. so while the fbi is investigating, the last thing they want is for me to be involved wounding around, because they're trained criminal investigators and our people or not. they need to do the criminal investigation, and then once that's done, if the department of justice chooses not to prosecute, then it comes back to the department and we take our disciplinary action to we are poised and ready on every one of those 100 investigations i told you about, but we need to make sure that criminal prosecutions and investigations run their course before we do. i'm sure i look at the question so let me preempt it, jean going to get the question of why do you let people retire rather than firing them and not allowing them to have their retirement money?

and let me be very clear on this. if you look at the law, the law does not give a government agency the ability to claw back the retirement that somebody has earned over a career. that is there's by the constitution, by the law, that's there's been less, unless they create, unless they commit treason or some other salacious act. so far we've not, you know, the fbi has not found or the department of justice has not found treason to this is also true in the private sector. you will have a hard time convincing a court to you can take away somebody's retirement earn over their career because of an administrative action. >> thank you. >> did you have that question in your pile, myron?

[laughter] >> that's free. that's free. >> would ask these questions because we want to hear your answers. the problems in phoenix were not isolated. a year earlier it was revealed that nurses at the buffalo va medical center were reusing insulin pens and possibly exposing veterans to hiv and hep tightness. and this year it was revealed that staff at the buffalo va were using improper sterilization procedures on medical equipment. have these sorts of problems returned elsewhere? what is the va doing to prevent these problems from reoccurring? >> i think this was my 101st day in position. that i've watched all of the hearings, and i think it was congressman coffman who, during one of the house hearings, held up in ig report i think from the year 2003, and talk about access issues in 2003.

2003. so, you know, yes, there have been a lot of issues. i think the learning from that for me is what got to get ahead of this. we've got to recognize that we need to build a capability that we don't have today. and that we just fought a war for over 12 years, 10, 12 years, and we're not going to see the full impact on those veterans for 40 years. so let's stop thinking about the past. it's important to teach us what to do in the future. we have done that work, but let's -- [applause] let's talk about what we have to do to build the capability so 20 years from now we are not looking at this again. again, that report was in 2003. and some of the members on the committee were there in 2003. [applause] >> from your perspective of your first 100 days in office, and thank you for being here on that important milestone, how much do

you feel the current problems in the va is faced on an artificial structure of the va? >> as i said in my remarks we are looking at part of our my va reform process will be looking at the organization structure. generally when i think of a high-performance organization, i think of the purpose and the value of the organization being the foundation to you've got to attack the first and second, technical conference. if your doctor, good doctor, nurse or they could nurses? then you have four pillars, leadership, do you have the right leaders? we are working to get the right people on the bus, in the right seats on the bus. we have hired a number of people recently but we've got other hiring to do. do you have the right strategies? that's bob. he's the guy who owns the strategies with me and we're working to look at the strategies, renew the strategy and then deploy the strategy to

systems, to have the right systems? to the lead to good outcomes? structure. do you have the right structure? coulter, do you have the right culture and i work now we're working on culture. there's nothing that is sacrosanct. the employees will help us change the hb much more veteran centric. >> i know you might be reluctant to speak about your predecessor, but let me ask the question. why do you kill general eric shinseki, a wounded combat veteran and former army chief of staff failed in his tenure as secretary of veterans affairs? and what have you learned from his mistakes? >> will i think for the last few minutes i've talked about what i've learned. general shinseki is an honorable man but he's a great american hero. i love him. i worked with his wife on our fundraising committee at west point. did you know that west point the government only provides about

85% of the money we need to train our future on officers? and you can imagine that people who stay in the service don't have money to donate. so it's up to people like me and sloan and others have had success in the private sector to donate that money. so i on her general shinseki, and i've been in touch with them. i thanked him for what he's done. to work to reduce homelessness by 33%, i defy you to find another example in history where a country is been able to drive homelessness down by that much that quickly. [applause] >> you have a distinguished record as a manager, but no background in health care, which is central to the va's mission. how then do you expect to be able to manage the va is a massive hospital system?

>> just to correct the record a little bit, i do have experience in health care. procter & gamble company has helped their business. i hope you use vix products. [laughter] the next is our -- [applause] we had during my time we have a concierge medical service called -- some of you may be enrolled in that. and we spend, at procter & gamble during my time we spent about $21 billion a year on research, much of it on health care. so no, i'm not entirely new to health care. i am new to hospital systems and that's why you hire smart people. [applause] >> building on that, what lessons learned from your tenure at procter & gamble to help to apply at va? and what are your measures for success of?

>> i would refer everybody to the internet. and equal the internet and you search bob mcdonald values-based leadership, at that site you will see my team leadership beliefs. i've been keeping track of my beliefs for about 25, 30 years but as a process i've taught in most of the major universities in the world. it's something i believe in. the first belief, very simply isn't living a life by a purpose, with the purpose leads to a more rewarding life and meandering through life without direction. and so i work with young people there i've worked with them all over the world. my wife and i have endowed a leadership conference at west point. we bring 80 students in from the united states and around the world to help them develop the purpose. and what i find is people at the va are totally committed to a purpose, and inspiring purpose. that's why they are the but believe me they are not there

for the money. they are not there for the building. they are there because of the purpose which is to care for veterans. second belief, everybody wants to be successful and success is contagious. how many of you got up this morning and said i want to go to the national press club today and put everybody on the world's biggest failure? nobody, right? so our job as leaders of the people 60. everybody wants to succeed. i've not met, i've lived all over the world to i speak multiple languages. i've not been any but in the world who tries to fail. so why do failures happen? failures happen because people feel prisoners of an organization and a culture, and what we as leaders need to do is to change the culture, change the organization to unleash those people so that they can succeed. that's what we're going to do. [applause] >> all too often, directors from

va central office are ignored in the field. how do you intend to drive change in va? can you please be specific? >> well, i talked about our change efforts, and the fact that our change efforts are not going to be just top down. they're going to be bottom up, and we've got teams of people organized to help create those changes. so it's pretty hard to ignore a directive from washington when it's written in spokane, washington, because you are the one who wrote it. so i think that, you know, my experience with change has got to start at the bottom and work, and be a collaborative process from the top and the bottom of the organization. one of the things i've done is i've gone around to different organizations around the country, is i've talked about my organization model. and i apologize to those of you who have heard me say it before, but most people think of an organization as a pyramid, an

upright pyramid. and generally at the bottom of the organization you have the customers. and the normal your largest organization, in any organization there is some kind of customer service organization or sales. a people who fan out throughout the country, the world selling your product or service. and then you would expect that on top of the organization would be the secretary, the ceo or whoever the highest-ranking person would be. well, i take that organization model and i turn it on its apex. i put the apex on the bottom. and what i say is that the highest people in any organization should be your customers. your customers should be the highest people in your organization. now, for us that's our veterans. but at the same time it's also the american public. in other words, you as an american public, despite a veterans disagreement, wouldn't want me to give 100% disability payment to everybody who asks if they didn't earn it, right?

because that wouldn't be good stewardship of taxpayer dollars. but across the top we've got a 22 million veterans. on the bottom, that's the secretary. my job is to try to make it easier for everyone else in that pyramid to serve the customer, the veteran. >> again, back to your 100 days in office, how were you able to so quickly reduce wait times for the processing of disability claims? >> well, i have to say that sloan gibson has been working at this since he's been here, and it's been longer than me. and great credit to allison hickey, undersecretary for benefits that there's. it's allison's vision and allison's leadership that has led to the creation of this computerized digital platform which really has been a key enabler in driving down claims. i also want to call out veteran

service organizations because i know many of them are represented in this room. veterans service organizations have been tremendous partners because we have all worked together to make sure that the claims are submitted, what's called fully developed claims, by making sure, but having those veteran service for positions partners and state governments have helped as well, make sure those claims are right before they get to us. then it makes it much easier to process them. so great credit to all of our partners. and as i said before we are open for business don't want to continue partnering with everybody. >> we're almost out of time, but before asking the last question we have a couple of housekeeping matters to take care of. first, i would like to announce the upcoming events that we will be having that on november 17, allison mcfarland, chair of the nuclear regulatory commission will speak about assuring the continued safe

operations of the nation's more than 100 nuclear power plants. on november 21, dr. anthony fauci, director of the national institute of allergy and infectious diseases will focus on the ebola outbreak. and on december 1, teresa sullivan, president of university of virginia will discuss trends in higher education. next, i'd like to present our guest with additional national press club mug. and, bob, the more often you come back from the more cups you get. there's no limit. >> thank you very much. [applause] and now for our last question. spent another one. >> you already gave me the mug. [laughter] >> there is not an extra month for the last question. bob, you have worked for a board of directors, not congressional committees are overseeing your work. what's that it is between

reporting to a board of directors and reporting to a congressional committee? >> actually it's pretty similar. you know, i have very good relationship with our congressional committees, and i want it that way. just as i've invited you to partner with us, i have invited them to partner with us and the been great partners. senator barry, bernie sanders who leads our senate committee, you know, we are great friends, i mean friends, yeah, we are great friends. [laughter] i don't want to give the impression we're so chummy he can do oversight because he does do that, but we traveled together to promote we both did recruiting talks at the medical school at the university of vermont, and also hard with medical school. same thing with chairman jeff miller of the house committee.

we went to florida together, which is just state. he's from the pensacola area but we went to tampa, st. petersburg. we spoke together at the university of central florida medical school, university of south florida medical school. we all, the nice thing about my job is nobody can argue with the nation, right? i mean, show me an american who will tell you that this is a bad mission our we shouldn't take your veterans. unlike many other things, these veterans have already earned what we're trying to give them. it's not like they have to earn it every day. they have already earned it. so it's just our job to give it to them and make sure we take care of them. so that's what we are about, and i'm pleased to work with the members of congress who have been terrific to me, and we've got a big job ahead of us because as i said, we are not going to see the cost of this war on the people who fought it into 40 years after it's over. [applause]

>> thank you, bob. and thank you again for coming today. and may i please request that you remain seated until the secretary has left, as i think he needs to get to another important engagement. but thank you again to everybody for being here. thank you again, bob. we are adjourned. [applause] ..

war in afghanistan told through the lives of three afghans and also walter isaacson on his book the end of acres about the programs and entrepreneurs that create the personal computer and internet that all gets underway on c-span2 tonight.

a discussion on wireless

technology challenges facing the fcc hosted by the progressive policy institute federal communications commission bureau chief roger sherman addresses efforts making a greater spectrum for broadband and promoting the deployment of infrastructure. this is about two hours. >> well marshal president of the progressive institute and i want to thank you for coming today for part promises to be a beautiful day in washington and

thank you for seizing the mobile moments policy choices facing the fcc and why consumers should pay attention. the mobile broadband revolution is maybe the most exciting thing happening in our economy and it's certainly the thing that gets consumers most excited about what's happening in the business sector. everybody is awaiting the next device and it's a remarkable thing. the only thing that i can liken it to is the automobiles when i was young but it's going to help navigate swarming bees days with cell phones going back and forth but really more than play things about all of us, this broadband revolution is a powerful catalyst for job creation for economic growth and invention,

for entrepreneurship and get you hear almost nothing on the campaign trail which is another sign of the growing disconnect between the politics and government but it's a highly technical and a somewhat arcane area of public policy shrouded in impenetrable jargon about a gigabyte. let's face it how you allocate the spectrum is not exactly the stuff of a grand political narrative. it's not as compelling as the war on women but it's important and that's why we are here today questions like spectrum shortage in the mobile space they will

approve and expand the mobile broadband ecosystem. so they have laid a heavy stress in my work on protecting the environment for the digital innovation. we think it is urgent and not to be talked about. it is key to the strategy that's important for putting america back on the high-growth path to share prosperity and that ought to start where we are showing success and it ought to build on the unique strengths in fusing science and commerce. michael mandel who you'll hear from in a minute has documented the rise of the data driven economy propelled by the massive privatization and broadband and by furious competition and he's measured the number of jobs created in 2007 alone it's a remarkable story working on a

roadmap for getting into the world and beyond. the expansion line is on the realm of the regulation. at the redeployment of the redeployment of the spectrum into the cell towers and these types of questions. in a perfect report we examined the question and they argued in this report to spectrum policy should be guided by the desire to maximize rather than the number of wireless providers and their allies on the former more than the latter and i want to give a special thanks to the organizer of today's event. at the speed of digital innovation poses challenges for regulation.

can the public sector keep up with what's going on in the broadband space and can government and grace government humility instead of trying to preempt bad things that might happen. these are the questions we look forward to having the keynote speaker roger sherman and the federal communication will be in that activity so that's why we are so happy he could be here today to talk about the ideas for meeting the moment. roger is the chief of the telecommunications be her own and previously democratic council on energy and commerce and was just after actor on communications and technology. after working on capitol hill

congressman waxman spent ten years as a character regulatory affairs at sprint so somebody that has worked on both sides of this issue and is qualified to have gotten us through the policy regulations so without further ado, over to you. [applause] will. it feels like a lot longer but i've been at the fcc for just a little less than a year and in commission time this is barely a blip on the radar. we've been moving moving at a fast pace taking on many complex issues. so we've had our hands blocked in the option and the incentive option and spectrum holdings,

licensing reform, joined the bidding rule, data on the plane. and i expect the pace will not let up anytime soon. while we are busy working on these issues they continue to be involved in new exciting ways that i want to talk to you about today as opportunities that we see from the bureau more opportunity to the infrastructure we see opportunity to the spectrum available to meet consumer broadband demand an opportunity to promote and protect our market place.

today think up to the overarching strategic goals. the infrastructure deployment, protecting and promoting competition and supporting and stimulating all forms. i lost just referring to the ec staffer agency itself, it requires the collaboration of stakeholders from industry and public interest community. many partners have a role to play in making sure the u.s. continues to be the leader. in fact we often challenged people that have a five year. one observation that the at the agency, i've come to appreciate refreshing it is when you have

badly hit saturday for use at a rate reasonable problems. love the bad dave asia that was the best way to navigate but it's more of the agency. not everyone comes into proposed solutions so we sometimes see some interesting or strange advocacy and i'm not going to call anyone else here. for a point of clarification you should assume that it's the companies pushing. there is no monopoly on that. last year the chair and challenged the industry to take up new approaches to new problems.

some embrace the challenges i did not play want to reiterate so take the opportunity to address some of these approaches and challenging this. instead of highlighting problems over the concrete specifics of actions we have back home. of the best way the best way to find solutions that are. you don't want the democrats making a voice on the interest of the voices. spectrum fine in development and it we can find examples in opportunity for the future so first let's talk about spectrum. there are great examples parties have seen an issue as a opportunity and begin to capitalize. this megahertz of spectrum was

in the commission's inventory for years but the industry work hard. aws three in particular 1755 to 1780 many were skeptical that the spectrum would be available for commander uses. due to the experience and other agencies and industries and in congress and to just over two weeks we are going to begin

auctioning 65 megahertz of spectrum in this stand. the largest in over five years. there are other opportunities to make that spectrum available for wireless broadband. the 3.5 megahertz to explore the way to offer spectrum through regulatory approaches and if we are successful in capitalizing he will open up another federal lands. the study to compare that to drive the solution. a little over a week ago she noticed a top of a query whether that that will determine how we can make a.

there are many ways for this initiative and in the barely call it the special frontiers. other talks about it in the context of five g. [inaudible] everyone is encouraged to participate. this is the ground and it is an opportunity for all. we can't forget about the first-ever option which is a huge opportunity to utilize an innovative approach to freeing up the spectrum. the option is delayed as the commercial commission announced it is by no means stopping or slowing. where developing into a

relatively new future. as we make the spectrum available all sides including the minority and women-owned small businesses in opportunity to participate and that's why a connected commission dated the first time in eight here's a lifetime in the industry and we have the opportunity to update and visit schools. that's where infrastructure comes in. i think infrastructure i've made infrastructure since i've joined the staff last year and i spent some time in the private sector and i have to contest i have a

private sector history for how difficult it is to build a wire when i was in the private sector nobody really wanted to talk about it. it's not a cutting issue some if it can be used. in the most recent activity we saw an opportunity to evolve old regulatory model to meet wireless networks. more specifically we updated the

manner in which the fcc evaluates the impact of the deployment of the empire and the short robberies and rules to clarify statutory limitations on state and local governments and reviewing infrastructure siting applications including for the first time the remedy of the state or local government failed to act on an eligible facility with a certain period of time and because i do from the noticed processor to great powers. the great thing about this item is that its proenvironment in the pro- local government and historical preservation but also takes into account the new reality of the wireless deployment. taken together the steps are all going to help to deliver more wireless capacity and locations across the u.s.. this isn't the only thing we are doing we also took steps to streamline the rules that deal with the lighting and marketing and also steps to trick you

expedite facility setting going forward and also bring a number of towers out of commission because of the regulatory status into compliance so that they could be available for code location. >> this is another example that they worked with us to give all reasonable solutions. the effort here was superb and all parties came forward with a ideas. we would miss the opportunities i spoke about earlier we don't see the opportunities. finally with all the opportunities it will fall flat if we do not promote competition >> i'm sure you've spoken about how important it is and how it was a consideration in everything we did so we always look to preserve the competitive marketplace into the future. we were encouraged into the chair and spoke to this they are

offering more consumer friendly prices. from our perspective this is a good thing and we expect it to drive innovation and fostered investment. one of our major successes in promoting and preserving the competition of 2014 with a national debate for special adoption of the nato meeting. in the msa indiana's eighth shorter. we revise the screen from a broadband and creative market-based reserve that would be optioned in the 2,016th incident option. this will create the opportunity for providers about the little band of spectrum to put a need to compete and be heard from many providers large and small that they want a spectrum as soon as possible. as the commission noted that there is significant risks of anti-competitive behavior in the downstream market and the agency plans preserving to promote competition to that and.

the transactions are in the screen and factor analysis to consider concentrations of the one gigahertz spectrum and we are going to look at opportunities to promote and defend competition competition in the world making. competitive marketplace tribes investment and innovation for all end users and devices. we are also working to address questions in the application of the rules especially as they relate to data roaming. there are petitions pending before the agency at this time given the importance of the competition in the current marketplace to commission staff is reviewing what is in front of us. finally no discussion would be complete without mention of the open internet proceedings. we are looking at what is needed to preserve not just for the fixed services but also mobile wireless services. as part of the review we are considering the implications of the network capacity constraints

we understand wireless is different and for those of you at the roundtable round table and i think chairman wheeler made us understand it's different that what we are exploring is what this means in practice and whether these differences can be addressed through the reasonable network management that applies to mobile providers. we are also looking at whether the commission could interpret the definition of commercial mobile service to the place of the mobile broadband service. a bottom-line come as it is noted in the blog posted yesterday by myself and julie we welcome and encourage additional thoughts on the topics. it's a very busy time at the wireless bureau and i hope it is clear that we are focused on the opportunities to promote spectrum availability and to protect and promote competition and access. we also want to do everything we can so that the united states can continue to be the world leader in wireless.

thanks so much for your time and consideration. >> why don't the panelists come up now. we have more chairs if you want to come down. >> thanks a lot roger and everyone for coming and i want to thank you for hosting this event and the folks behind the scenes who do the work to get the show going. cody is in the front row and stephen is back here and i appreciate everything you do.

now it's time for the expert panel but many of the panelists have in common papers and papers that's drawn our attention and we will give an opportunity to talk about some of the research in all of the research is available on the webpage. what else is available are links to the shows and i'm particularly proud of the last two if you haven't seen them it is a must-have policy watch. we had one on interconnection and gave the keynote that was fantastic and you can watch on the website and then we had one on the net neutrality debate with kevin warbucks where we had agreed but that didn't put an end to the debate. they are fabulous shows.

i'm very excited to have c-span covering the event. i called her mom and she asked if it was on c-span one and two. i said it's going to take some time. the purpose of the panelists to explore interesting wireless issues facing the commission but first let's go over ground rules. i'm going to ask questions of the panelists and if they go along with the premise that he will stay with the softball but if you want to fight with me then we will go to the hospital questions. [laughter] for the audience i want to lean on you heavily for questions i don't want to be responsible for filling up the airtime so i want to go to the audience about 20 minutes in. i find it boring to sit there and listen in our street so i want you to be thinking right now about tough questions you want to put to the panelists.

this is an all-star wireless lineup we have the government appears from cisco input government affairs office she leads the global public policy agenda for wireless and the technology during her career she worked among other things as a staff lawyer and manager and holds a jd and masters of science from xeric use but the chief economist progressive policy institute holds an appointment for innovation management. prior to joining he was among other things the chief economist at of business week for 21 years. raising. he holds a phd in economics from harvard university.

impressive almost as having a phd from johns hopkins. [laughter] he is particularly on the wireless telecommunications into before founding the analytics barger was the scene binders president >> senior vice president and providers in the world. he was also senior vice presidents. peter is an expert on the capabilities and evolution of the technology and he's president of research and executive director of the portable center, portable communication organization.

peter importantly has a master of science engineering from stanford, very careful and we are going to lean on that header will be particularly my first question. i wanted him to tell all the questions even though it's directed to one panelist i would encourage you to weigh in but let me start on the issue of the day of net neutrality and talk about how this relates to wireless but let's put that to work. they want to pay for deals whereas they pay for priority because everyone else will get a lower quality of service if that were true it could start to mess with innovation. i want to ask you those priority for the given edge provider

necessarily entailed a sacrifice of the quality of service for other providers or is it possible to introduce a priority without degrading the quality of tax >> it depends whether it is a zero-sum game. from an engineering perspective you would add such. there may be some scenarios you have absolutely no concern and capacity and certainly in the wired networks and a lot of the situations you have capacities of prioritizing certain types in the system doesn't necessarily have any adverse effect was. >> as anti-communist witch if i heard it right it doesn't

necessarily entail a sacrifice where there are no injured parties and there will be two or three beneficiaries does it make sense to have a blanket prohibition or should we address these on a case-by-case basis? >> what does economics have to say about this? >> that is a good question let me give it a bigger picture. we are adding an unusual moment macroeconomic and because there is a pool of funds out there and a very low interest rates. roger mentioned about investment right now we need to set up policies that create investment incentives while the money is cheap take the priority by raising the price into the quality at the same time can do that's so that's really the

framework we need to look at that asks. we know that producing -- allowing the high-quality products will bring in the words that could produce more competition. it's more investment and capacity and also more room for competition but what we have to do is create a structure people can say i earn back the money i am going to invest in side you are bringing up the blanket approach mission with the providers can do.

you have somebody creating a new network that potentially could create a lot more competition and investment than we have now. it would be a bad idea to have a blanket over the prohibition and what we have seen in terms of broad economics is that allowing a differentiation of products is going to create a lot more investment. >> also blankets would mean that we are moving the innovation in the way business models are evil thing. may there be deals that might be that yes but then we should address those on a case-by-case basis that we should allow every participant in the value chain and in the marketplace to integrate.

>> i have one more thing. we should think about the policy at this point in a long-term chance rather than a long-term sense. if you are going to move over to the wireless space. there's a lot of talk that they want a different set of net neutrality for the wireless and whatever gets applied to the wire line. there are four plus in the market and to wire lines were different capacity constraints to dictate a different set of net neutrality in the 2010

open-ended order to. we saw the distinctions that were made there with respect to wireless made sense to us. we didn't base it on the market structure. wireless carriers are dealing with the capacity constraints that very by the time of day in fiscal space, by events that are happening with whether it's the world cup or the world series and so these have a different impact in the wireless world relative to the wire line so we thought to the 2010 decision hit the right notes and have been urging the ftc to stick to that as it contemplates the sort of

the next wave >> i would like to add to that i have heard mention that there's a recognition that wireless and wire line are different. i am not sure if the average person looking at this knows how different they really are. so let me just provide a little bit of insight. one of fiber-optic cable has 2,000 times the capacity of all the spectrum. so we are talking orders and orders of magnitude difference of capacity alone while the networks are extremely dynamic people's connections depending on whether they have a good quality signal or they are at the edge or the center of the south that can determine their capability by an order of

magnitude if not more. people are mobile to become mobile in and out of the area so it is extremely dynamic and also wireless networks tend to much closer towards the limits of their capacity than the wireline networks and that means how they are managed are fundamentally different and then you can also look at what is happening with lte into some of its capabilities such as polity of service architecture. they were in the middle of a transition to voice over ip and wireless and unless the control traffic are handled with high priorities the voice just won't work and there's nothing comparable happening.

let me try to make the counter argument depending on what the rules are. let's go back to the 2010 open-ended rules. there is a presumption that any parody would be in violation of the nondiscrimination rules. if we were to flip the presumption around under the

case-by-case approach and this is what the dc circuit was asking for and make them presumptively efficient and unless proven otherwise by the content provider so as to allow or put the burden on the content provider to prove that was discriminatory if we went with that approach. >> it definitely is a better approach. i hearken back to my days that is in the care of sedition. the moving party seeking to make

the demonstration that had been filed as discriminatory have some burden of coming forward with the information to show the tariff was discriminatory. i like where you're going with the idea. i have to think about whether it would be the -- at the roundtables the fcc dalia about the two of what i consider three alternative paths they lay out the blanket prohibition.

they are efficient unless proven otherwise. they would go to the sponsorship deals roger this is for you if produced a low price unlimited data plan at $40 a month but excluded the video service other than youtube but every other video service was basically excluded and to upgrade the experience i understand they got

google to compress the video for delivery over the older networks but i don't know is whether they made a side payments to the metro pcs. public interest groups show that this was a violation and in april of 2011 i want to know wasn't a good thing for wireless consumers were a good thing? >> it is a recognition that is only a certain amount of spectrum available in the video is the spectrum and bandwidth piece that exists because for this to work on them already is

a as a challenge to make it work on two g. is an even bigger challenge and the only way of you can do that is through compression. they would have agreed to compress this. and youtube at that time was just the biggest consumption that was able to do that so the deal that matrox did hear brought the video to people that otherwise could not have gotten the video at all. so they are bursting in thirsting in the water than none at all. >> think of it as quality

differentiated services they are both better quality services and lower quality services that you can perhaps choose less for and are accessible. high quality services are the ones that are produced a wide range of services and perhaps cost more and if you think about the economics, you end up with both more revenue and higher consumer welfare. so this was a good thing. >> certain content providers such as facebook and google might want to subsidize broadband access for the low income users. they might be able to monetize those in a way that in general

should they step in between the deals in which a large content provider subsidizes the end users broadband access price? does anyone want to take that? who >> one of the goals that we have is bringing broadband and broadband services to more people. it is a win for everybody involved otherwise many of the users wouldn't be able to use it to that extent so is it a positive thing.

in this case if we are opening up access to more people i would add on to what roger said as we think about this in terms of its effect on the investment as well so we don't just want to subsidize, we want to make sure that. the companies providing services over wireless are benefiting quite handsomely.

the average school user generates more than $40 in revenue. the average facebook user generates more than $10 of revenue for facebook. so, for them that users want to use these services. they get it from no direct payment. and it also benefits the companies and if they would like to ask the jury usage for them to share some of the revenues that they make from the users using the service, they would benefit to as they grow up. >> i would like to add that we are in the early days of mobile broadband this is going to be a multi-decade unfolding and it's hard to predict exactly what

kind of applications are going to drive this industry so any constraints on the evolution i think are likely to have adverse consequences i think we should experiment with all different ways of making content and broadband services. we are going for 45 minutes now and just to kind of break things up we've got one back there and if we can introduce yourself it would be i. it's less crowded over here so i would invite you to join me. i want to follow up on the last question for the panel and ask

what did you see that private companies were changes to make meaningful broadband access more available in the low affordable housing for not just the pipeline to the apartment or to the house but also the equipment and the technical support that makes that meaningful for the job opportunity in as well as entertainment that creates revenue. >> anybody want to take that on? i think mobile is the answer. the way that most of the world's population is connecting to the internet is through mobile devices. and i would suspect that as we march forward with its trend is going to continue. certainly to be embraced by the lower income populations in the u.s. and the technology is very firm and growing.

the cost of the connection drops. those were all good things. the competitive market in the space is important to keep the prices down but to me the answer relies primarily on this sector to try to bring as many people as possible into the broadband space. a lot of the minorities have already made that jump. they have to make it more

affordable. >> we have a question in the front row as well. >> when you first take that premise on the net neutrality discrimination particularly for the new startups and get you came around and talked about on the video side there were rules and whether the new provider had to prove that discrimination or whether the program side of that is discrimination are harder to prove for the small start up he is suddenly looking at the terms and conditions and trying to get to a customer the burden on them mom and pop startup to say okay we can prove there is discrimination out there. we cannot go on yet and i don't really care. we have enough lawyers and smart mines around it but for the

smart ups that's harder so if you can do the premise forward put the premise forward to you have any thoughts on how that works. >> i give you permission to answer that way. >> i do want to answer. it all depends on how we set up the evidentiary or a burden and we could even have a burden shifting as well. it's a demonstration that the quality of service was degraded for defining the priority offer at that point perhaps it could shift over to have to defend why the treatment had the efficiency ground but it all comes down to how you designed you design the ground rules if you make it excessively burdensome to win the case if it can go on for

five years then i would sympathize which there are infirmities and how the video site is set up but that doesn't mean that it's still not the right answer. we are starting from a blank slate and we can design the rules to accommodate these concerns. are there any other questions before i was going to go back? why don't you go down. >> georgetown center for the policy i'm making my way through the order and i hope some of the palace have gotten further than i have and if they are ready their particular items that are missing or if there are still things that you think that they should do that wasn't in the

order would have should be in the future orders. the investment anything that is done that makes the investment in the infrastructure easier is a real improvement especially as they move to small cells. so i think that the conversation going forward is going to turn out to be more evenly balanced than it is now.

the pacing is around the building coverage. and i hope that this order will help significantly in that endeavor in the burden that they have to meet or outdoor coverage is not alone because a lot of the municipalities are blocking by saying they have outdoor coverage. it's fine. well, the reality of is that it is that they are using it indoors so we need more of the sites and this will help

stimulate at the investment by the investment by recognizing how much happens in the war and give more help to the carriers to build the sites and manage indoor coverage. >> i think there was a question over here and then we will go back. >> and share it with a high-tech spectrum coalition. we talked about access to the wireless services and the demand from the things the providers are doing. we haven't really talked about the spectrum. that's one of the things we can do to reduce the cost or keep the cost as low as possible over the long term to get more spectrum in the pipeline for wireless carriers we all know the demand is skyrocketing and wanted to know if any of the panels have any creative ideas on how to gain access to more government spectrum and how to transition the commercial

spectrum that's out there for the mobile. or is. a speck out of the get other government agencies to give up the spectrum that they are holding. >> i think a lot of nudging and incentives would be a good way. there's a lot of inertia. one spectrum there was one case where they were using the spectrum twice a year for the launch around cape canaveral for about ten minutes during the course of that year and for that we have blocked it out nationwide 365 days a year so there is a lot of inertia. there is a lot of i can't afford it.

but when you take the spectrum analyzer and hold it out and look at where is the actual usage is in the wifi. other than that, the spectrum analyzer has virtually no usage other than here and there a little bit. so there is a lot of spectrum that is used 99% of the time and not at all and if we incentivize people we can clear a lot of spectrum. >> i just want to say wanted to say i think we are about to start the aws three options in its fourth pausing for a moment to consider the combination of the congressional policymakers, the fcc and the leadership at the department of defense has enabled the option to go forward because that's banned was

stalled for years and years and it took some nudging and it took some creative lawmaking with the commercial spectrum enhancement act in order to pay for the changes that the dod is going to be incurring. ..